Re: tr portability

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Bruno Haible wrote on Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 02:06:17PM CEST:
> Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> > > > I hear that there really do exist systems in actual use
> > > > on which tr still does not honor backslash-escapes like \r and \n.
> > > 
> > > Which platforms, please?
> > 
> > Solaris 10 /usr/ucb/tr.  Not likely to be early in PATH, but hey, people
> > do all kinds of weird things to their path.  ;-)
> 
> This is not documented in the autoconf manual, section "Limitations of
> Usual Tools". But I can confirm the fact:

I think the usual response is: don't put /usr/ucb early in $PATH.
It hurts for all kinds of reasons.  Listing this fact is much more
helpful than listing all the deficiencies of the tools in /usr/ucb,
some of which are segfaults with weird inputs or so.

Maybe the Autoconf manual should contain: please don't put /usr/ucb
nor '.' in $PATH, and if you must, put it as late as possible.
Dunno, I don't have a strong opinion on all of this.

Cheers,
Ralf